Wonder and the Thinks You Can Think

On a recent walk around the College, I noticed a group of Year 1 students walking across the oval. One observant child noticed something that made the entire group stop. “FROG!” someone yelled and the  attention of every single student became fixed on that poor little amphibian. The excitement in their eyes and the enthusiasm and sheer wonder of seeing a green tree frog was contagious. It reminded me of how a sense of wonder is innate within every young person. No-one has to “teach” children to have this wonder, it just comes naturally. It also made me realize how incredibly easy it is to lose our sense of wonder. As we grow older, we can become so “knowledgeable”, so ”educated”, so “sophisticated” that we lose the wonder of life and the wonder of living. A recent study on creativity explored the creative processes of kindergarten children and found that these students scored in the highest levels of creative reasoning and divergent thinking. The longitudinal study then measured their levels of creativity as they progressed through formal schooling and the results were frightening. The scores for nearly all of these children went BACKWARDS through their formal schooling years!

In his current TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson has suggested that our current obsession with standardized testing and congested curriculum stifles rather than stimulates creativity and wonder within our children. He makes the statement that teaching - really good teaching “is a creative profession… teaching properly conceived is not a delivery system… So in the place of curiosity, what we have is a culture of compliance. Our children and teachers are encouraged to follow routine algorithms rather than to excite that power of imagination and creativity”.

On that same walk where our students were discovering the wonder of green tree frogs, I also watched the musical team rehearsing for the upcoming performances of Suessical Jr. The opening song, sung so persuasively by Cat in the Hat, reinforced the importance of this sense of wonder, imagination and creativity that lies at the heart of all meaningful learning. The Cat in the Hat reveals:

Oh, the thinks you can think! Oh, the thinks you can think If you’re willing to try...

Think invisible ink! Or a gink with a stink! Or a stair to the sky...

If you open your mind, Oh, the thinks you will find

Lining up to get loose... Oh, the thinks you can think 

When you think about Seuss...

May we never lose sight of “the thinks you can think” and the importance of creativity and a sense of wonder throughout the entire educational journey. And may we never become too jaded or “knowledgeable” that we cannot learn from a green tree frog, a cat in a hat and a group of excited 6 year olds filled with a sense of wonder!